


I Don't Quite Remember

by UlisaBarbic



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Dad Son Goku (Dragon Ball), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Family Feels, Father-Son Relationship, Future Gohan - Freeform, Future Trunks Briefs Timeline, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Memories, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:28:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24384295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UlisaBarbic/pseuds/UlisaBarbic
Summary: The final day of Future Son Gohan's life, in his final stand against the Androids, he remembers and is distressed by what is no longer crystal clear.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	I Don't Quite Remember

Gohan laid there, the rain drenching his skin even as blood leaked out of the millions of tiny fractures in his flesh. He had known it would come to this. He had known it for a while. As strong as he had grown, it was not enough. 

  
Now, he knew, it was time. The impact of the ki-like attacks of the two Androids was relentless and he could feel his life being bombarded. His ki, despite how much he tried to raise it, despite how much he tried to force himself back up, tell himself to run or dodge or to do absolutely anything…

  
He was too damaged and the attack was too focused. There was no mistaking it. This attack was going to take his life.

  
Gohan felt at an impasse at such a realization.

  
He had been fighting, non-stop, nearly all his life. First against the Saiyans, then on Namek and now…he had been fighting since the Androids had come and it had been a relentless, endless onslaught since that day all his friends fell.

  
Since that day, it had been traveling, fighting and struggling to catch up with the people he had loved. The power his father had possessed. Had he surpassed him? No, he was fairly certain of that. If he had, it would have been the Androids lying here, dying, not him.

  
Maybe a stupid thing to do as you were dying. Think over what you didn’t accomplish but what else could he do as he waited for the inevitable? Some truth to that old tale over seeing your life flash past your eyes as you died. He’d asked his father about it, about the death against Raditz, especially after their adventure on Namek. Goku had smiled, said that he didn’t see everything. Just the things most important to him. That was why he had tried to keep his focus on him and on Krillin as he died.

  
His father had been a lot more introspective than people thought. He thought outside the box, he came up with radical ideas, he had more resources than anyone could have imagined. They might be unorthodox and seem insane but they never had failed them. 

  
He could have used him now.

  
His father…

  
That had been the hardest part of this life. Not the surviving. He knew how to catch food, he knew how to find water. He knew how to create shelter. He knew how to track. He knew how to make himself hard to find.

  
But knowing his father was gone and there would be no welcoming smile, no welcoming hug, no squealing of how proud of him he was, that was the hardest part of the new reality to accept. He used to go to his mother and they would discuss it, talk about the man…

  
But when the Androids became so active, when the dying and killing became every day, Gohan couldn’t risk bringing them back to Mount Paouz. They never bothered to venture out there. His mother and Grandfather, for the most part, were safest out there.

  
For Gohan, the living in the woods was a welcomed memory. Much as the training with Piccolo was harsh, it was also the period of his life when he learned what he was truly capable of. Of what he could do. Of the true limits he had and also of how he could burst through them. 

  
The earth responded to being attacked poorly. The lack of people able to control the technological issues or chemical spills meant that the world’s air and ground began to deteriorate. The Androids, especially the boy, took pleasure in making that as bad as he could. 

  
Gohan, barely fourteen, had plowed into a nuclear meltdown to save as many people as he could. It had been a miniscule amount; far less than his father would have been able to save he was certain. It had been a life though. 

  
And that day had shown the Androids that there was someone out there refusing to accept things as they were. Someone out there that would stand against them. Gohan had wanted to plow after them the day all his friends were slaughtered but logic had won out—he would have just given them another victim.

  
Now…it had taken them a great many years but they were going to be triumphant over him.

  
Yet also a relief for the half-Saiyan. A relief from the days full of blood, death and fear. The day that had his heart pounding so harshly and his body aching even if he had not fought…his body ached from the constant adrenaline pouring through his veins and he had no means of alleviating it. 

  
Nights were a reprieve for Gohan. At least for a time.

  
Sleep was fractured, in short bursts and there was always a faint bit of his ki that was forever alert. But in the short pieces where his mind could wander, it always went to the same place. His childhood, when his father was alive.

  
When the man would laugh and toss him skyward, so high that he could wave to the birds. When they would take turns splashing one another in the lake. When they would compete with each other for the largest fish catch.

  
It took about three years before they began to fade.

  
The first time it happened, it had been powerful enough to wake Gohan with a shout that likely would have killed him if Androids had been there to hear. 

  
The realization had hit him with the strength of a punch to the gut.

  
His father’s face, so clear in his mind and heart, was beginning to fade. Like a photograph left out in the sun. He could still see the hair, the grin, the strong stature. Yet, the deeper details—the ways his lips would curl up or the glimmer in his eyes…that was suddenly far from Gohan’s memory.

  
“I don’t quite remember.” He had said, sobs choking his throat. “I’m forgetting. He’s Daddy! I’m supposed to always remember. I SWORE to always remember.” 

  
Curled up on himself, shaking, sobbing silently, he had spent the rest of the night awake plowing through his memories, trying to replenish that which could not be replenished. He tried to cling to his most powerful memories, the ones so present in his mind. Morning had come with bruises on Gohan’s head and temple from his many blows against them in utter desperation. Desperation as he tried to fill the emptiness in his chest with a mist of what had once been there.

  
Photographs at home had not had the effect he wanted. Photographs were frozen in time and all emotion was lost over time. He had taken the first chance he had to obtain paper and paint and had, to the best of his ability, to replicate that which was in his head.

  
But as he had come to the image of his father’s face, he had broken down in sobs again. 

  
“I don’t quite remember.”

  
He could remember the man laughing. But WHAT the laugh sounded like…it was fading.

  
He could remember the man smiling. But the WARMTH of it was gone.

  
He could remember his father’s eyes. Welcoming, happy. But what shade had they been? 

  
His father’s touch. Always full of love but…rough? But soft too? Wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?

  
It used to be that he could recall his father’s scent like it was his own. Bamboo, grass and…and…

  
He couldn’t quite remember. 

  
The dreams became less poignant. They became less clear. As if he was looking at them through a lens that grew more scratched, broken and muddy with each passing day. Enough that now what had once been so clear and vibrant was little more than a shadow.

  
The gi had been his final grasp. The final clutching at what memory remained, at the memory of what once was. The final attempt…

  
Wrapping himself in memory.

  
That was truly what the gi had meant to him. He had been honest when he’d told Trunks he hoped it gave him strength. He truly did pray for that. But the reason had been much more selfish; his father’s gi was still strong in his mind. If he wrapped himself in it, perhaps…perhaps…it would keep what memory he had left fresh and clear.

  
It hadn’t.

  
Tears sprung up in Gohan’s eyes and not from the pain of his dying body and of his spirit trying to depart. Of the feeling that he had failed. He had not kept what was most vital in his heart. He had forgotten. He had not meant to. He had done whatever he could think of to do. He had clung to whatever piece of his father had had left with bleeding fingernails. Yet time, with her endless cruelty, had stripped it away and all he had left was a visage of once was. 

  
Lonely.

  
So lonely.

  
Scared.

  
Cold.

  
He was going to die and he was afraid. 

  
He was going to die and he was afraid.

  
He was going to die.

  
He could still see them. Their smug faces. The darkness in their eyes that sucked all warmth from the atmosphere. The laughing of suffering and the way they nonchalantly disregarded anything that was not for their own amusement. He was going to die looking in the faces of two murderers that would count his life for nothing.

  
The blasts were hot, bright. Two separate blows that seemed to merge into one that flooded all his consciousness. Solid white, nothing but whiteness and pain. So much pain. He had never died before; he never imagined it was this way—long, drawn out, and so terribly lonesome.

  
Trunks was still alive and that gave him some comfort . It meant that there was still hope for the future and that not everything they had done had been for naught. It meant there would be someone left to extract justice.

  
That left him though. 

  
And he was afraid. He had lived through so much. He had endured so much. He had tried so hard. 

  
And now, he was alone for his death.

  
So hot. Bright. Blinding.

  
_Gohan…_

  
A voice. So close yet so far. He could just barely make out something, something before him. Not the Androids. Not Trunks. He could still feel the bombardment of ki, he could still feel his body being all but shredded, inch by inch. He could still feel the rain sizzling as it met skin that was quite literally being boiled alive.

  
But in-between those blasts, in between those endless pillars of power, he saw something else. Heard something else. 

  
He couldn’t place it. It was like trying to hear through water. Muffled. Distorted.

  
_Gohan._

  
It was a man. A shadow of a man and he extended a hand out to Gohan. He was an eclipse against the sun of the two Androids. Yet everything passed through him as if he was not there at all. Nothing was touching this visitor, whomever he was. 

  
But as the next phrase left the figure’s mouth, Gohan’s heart stopped.

  
_Come on, little man._

  
Gohan reached out in response, his hand suddenly no longer restrained by the pressure of the attack pinning him to the ground. Fingers entrapped his with the pressure of clouds but with the undeniable strength of steel behind them, hidden behind a tenderness that was wielded with expert precision.

  
The form pulled him forward and Gohan’s vision cleared.

  
Spiky black hair that never seemed to stand still or remain in the position for longer than a minute with tiny wisps of black that always escaped around the ears. It framed his face, centered by two dark black eyes that were wide with love and energy. The entire universe was in those eyes.

  
The scent of bamboo, grass, water and the gentle dusting of sweat amid sawdust invaded his senses and the sound of old laughter flooded his mind. Warm, but low yet with a high chortling that would sneak in near the end of the laugh and a snort that would come if it went on too long. 

  
That smile. The smile he had not seen in years. The tiny wrinkles that would curl around the corner of the mouth and how you could barely see his teeth through them. The way the very essence of the man wrapped around you as if it was alive.

  
“Da-da-dd…”

  
Those strong arms pulled him close and with the one arm he had left, Gohan clung to the man before him with all the strength in the world. One hand fell into his hair and he buried his face into the chest that rose and fell though not with air any longer. 

  
Gohan’s entire body filled with a sense of connection he had not felt in years. The missing piece of his life, the missing warmth that turned all pain away and made all struggle worth it. Because now he was here. He was here.

  
Back in his father’s arms.

  
“I’m so proud of you, little man.”

  
Memories did Son Goku no justice.  


**Author's Note:**

> So many people loved my "Fear, Love and Oblivion" and asked for Gohan meeting his father again in the future timeline. Thus, we have this.


End file.
